Meltwater - Writing

You are to blame. It is you who have killed me. All you citizens who remained quiet while they built it, all of you men in the Cardiff Bay Corporation; money grubbing uncaring parasites the lot of you. This is my last testimonial. I'm not dead yet, but sure as this place has changed, you have killed me. I've been lying here for a month, slowly watching my rib cage emerge from the flesh that once covered it with muscle and fat. I am little more than a skeleton now, you know the type, that's right, the ghastly figures you've seen in the concentration camps of the second world war, and in more recent times in the late and lamented Yugoslavia.

This is what has become of me, lying here neglected and dying. You need not know my real name. Chose one of the many that the children used to call me. I have gone by many different names; Lumpy, Slippalong, Kung Fu Eddie, the Eggs and Bacon man, Charley the dog, Pig face, Smell, Dirty Fuckin' Bastard. Take your pick, they never meant anything to me, but they seemed to amuse you no end. I've put on my show for you many times, taken your pity and posed in your photographs. I'm the man you pissed on when you were drunk, the one who raided your bins for food, and who frightened your children. That was when you yourself didn't frighten them with your tales of horror about me. I was once all these things and more, but soon I will be dead. The sooner the better, the pain is unbearable. But I will not let the pain sway and taint my story. I will tell you the facts as clear and consciously as I can, and then I hope I can die in peace.

You need not know the reasons why I turned my back on my family, society and soap, its a long and quite frankly, uninteresting story. All that matters is that I did. It took a while to break the bonds of my old life, and once I had, I discovered a profound freedom. It was shortly after the initial break that I discovered and moved into an old hut on the side of an unused and derelict Cardiff dock. Life was simple back then in the late seventies. It was easy to survive without money. I was still young back then. Well, early forties, but I felt good, there with my dog, my shelter and the old wooden quays. I gave them all names, silly really but I'd grown up living around Tiger Bay, and those old wooden structures had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. Poor things never looked happy, stuck there in the silvery mud, waiting for the tide to slip back in and cover their naked disrepair.

I was happy then, sitting on the dock of the bay. Only thing was, I couldn't watch the ships going out and coming in, as there hadn't been any for years. But I could imagine what it would have been like full of those old masted coal ships. I would make my occasional trips to the town centre, but they became less frequent as I discovered everything I needed to survive around where my hut was. My brick hut was alongside an old warehouse, unused and overgrown. Luckily for a long time it had running water, a single tap stuck out of the red brickwork. It had no door to speak of and was little bigger than a prison cell. It kept the rain off my head though, so I was happy. When the weather was cold I'd hang a large piece of sack cloth over the empty doorway, and snuggle up under some old tarpaulins which had been thoughtfully left behind. As for food, I'd leave a couple of fishing lines in the dirty water, and I'd always catch the odd fish, although they never looked very healthy. But man can't live on fish alone, unless he's Jesus. I had to wander off to find the rest of my food.

It was a short and precarious clamber over the barbed wire and corrugated steel barriers that blocked off the walkways across the tops of the old and decrepit sea-gates. Over the three large dock doors I'd have to climb, being very careful not to fall into the dark mud and debris in the enclosed dock below. That would have meant certain death, sucked into a deep grave with a variety of old iron, rope, traffic cones and unwanted puppies for company. Destitute and happy as I was, I didn't want to end up in that black mire, with no one to hear my cries for help but them scabby seagulls circling above. No sir, almost everyday I made that trip across the old gates, and never once did I put a foot wrong, no matter what state I was in. I always wondered why they bothered barricading them off, it never stopped the gangs of kids from the surrounding estates climbing over them.

Many a pleasant hour was spent sat outside my hut watching those kids at play, a colourful selection of the many nations of God's own earth was there to be seen. From Butetown and Grangetown the tribes came, waging war on each other in the brambles and muck around the muddy dockside. They were wild creatures with fire in their eyes and grazes on their elbows. How they never killed themselves in all that chaos and dereliction I'll never know. And they all knew me, they all had their own names for me as I sat out with me fire, cooking fish and water rats. Hateful they were at times, but that never stopped me enjoying their games. I was young once also, and I remembered the cruelty that I hurled at people like myself at their age. In the end they were harmless, and the odd one even stopped by occasionally, to see if I was alright and bring some bread which he'd stolen from the house. Ah, the innocence and spitefulness of the young, contradictory to the end.

Once past the barriers, I had a quick walk across the brambled and scraggy headland, past the old bricked-up pump house and down on to the flats of the grassy foreshore. That grassy foreshore between the sea wall and the grey waters of the Severn was a rich hunting ground. What I didn't find there doesn't exist. The weak yellow grass swam away from me in all directions. I would often sit on the sea wall along that grand old street, watching the wind rustle ahead of me to the water line. It was a grand name for a grand old street, Windsor Esplanade. The regal name hinted at the grandeur of the old terrace and its former inhabitants, the coal and steel merchants own luxury street away from the common men. Although, as nice as those houses were, I'd never have swapped one for my old dockside hut. At least, until I had too.

Yes, my hunting ground swept away, trapped between the water and the terrace, until the sea wall stopped and the plain opened out to the mouth of the Taff. The grass wore a necklace of dried bracken and drift wood at its high water mark. This line was infused with every conceivable item of modern life, washed in from the murky and polluted waters of the Severn, or chucked over the wall of the street by its lazy inhabitants.

Not that I complained, as that was how I survived. I found everything along their that modern man can wish for. Old furniture, clothes, coal, books, tins of food, fresh vegetables and fruit in old wooden crates were there to be found. Also the essentials of life, tobacco, cannabis, alcohol; illegal cargo's dumped at sea and washed up for me to find and enjoy. Everyday I would go out with my sack to find my sustenance, and I never had to travel far before I filled it. It was rare for me to reach the tidal banks of the Taff's estuary, the muddy and overgrown foreshore supplied everything. You can keep your city centre shops and out of town Superstores, everything man needs was here for the taking, a garden of Eden at the fringe of a grimy city's waterfront. At least it was, until you and your damned machines came.

Yes, it was you who allowed this to happen. It was you that let them take my home and my freedom away from me. Ten years I lived in that brick hut in the shelter of the old dockside warehouse. I was happy, content and no bother to anyone, with an open door to any person unprejudiced enough to make my acquaintance. Sure, there were times when I was bombed out of my brain on what ever pleasure I could find on the shore, but it was never with spite towards anyone. Lack of offence towards anybody had always been my credo. With a dying hindsight I have started to regret it. Perhaps if I'd have got angry back then it would never have all started, as you should have. Perhaps my life would have been saved, as would that fragile wonderland and the unique community of a diverse, proud, spirited, down to earth, and decent people.

But it started alright. As sure as day turns into night and money makes the world go round. It began, with a petroleum grinding and shouts of destruction. I was just waking up when they came for me the first time. They pulled me out, still clutching my tarpaulin in a hungover haze. They manhandled me out with their uncaring humour, dangling me over the dockside, asking me if I wanted to drop. May god take my eyes now if I ever treated another man like that. After their fun they pulled me away from the derelict ground that had been my pleasant home for ten years, supreme in their safety hats and glowing vests. Without a care as to my condition or need of accommodation, they told me I could not return. They seemed to take pleasure pushing me onto the street, which curled around the back of my thorny quay. Dejected and lost, I sat the rest of the day, and the following days, on a crumbling wall down the road from my home.

I sat and watched as the fences went up, the bulldozers moved in, and the warehouses came crashing down, taking my home with them. For the first days I was perplexed by the wanton destruction, the cries of glee and groaning of demolition. Then I got hungry, sick of the sight of the men at work. I walked away as the walls of my hut crumbled to dust. I walked to Windsor Esplanade, along the concrete route that was so unfamiliar to me. I climbed over the sea wall there, onto my grassy haven, at least they couldn't demolish that. It didn't take long for me to find some food, eat a hearty meal and reconsider my situation.

I mentioned that the houses on that sea facing street were grand, but at that time it was only in their design, not their condition. A number of the old Victorian houses were boarded up, so as loathed as I was to take on the responsibilities of being a home owner again, it seemed I had little choice. It didn't take long to find one suitable to live in, and it took an equally short time to furnish it to the basest standards. The upstairs front room was not boarded up, so I made that my home. I couldn't see my old dock from there, but I had an even more pleasant view, out over the Severn. The majestic waterway swam below my window, cradled by the mighty Penarth Head on the right, and cranes of the working docks in the distance to the left. Out from the road and sea wall below my window ran the marshy foreshore, which I still frequented regularly to fulfil my needs.

The location was unique and quite enviable, I still watched the children play, the same multicoloured, ragtag army from the quay-side would often be at the end of the street outside. The names remained the same, only now that I lived in a house, they saw me as a phantom, a ghost, a child cannibal. Not that I would ever have harmed a hair on one of them, to breath in their joy as they ran through the grass with their guns and water weapons blazing was enough to negate their cruelty. The gulls would scatter into the hazy air above as they swooped and rollicked along, sending the long grass spewing sideways, more ghostly than I ever was. Then in the distance, where my old warehouse had been, strange new structures began to grow, twisting upwards as their skeletons gnarled and spewed out in different directions. Along where there had been old and grand sea buildings, a new species had arrived to make them extinct.

It was worrying at first, but I let it go. After all, it didn't affect me, did it? My scavenging wasteland lay safe away from the rush and panic of the distance. The daily too and fro of the capricious tide furnished my shore with the fruit that fed, clothed and entertained me, what ever happened, I would have that. The time that I lived in that ramshackle old house was as pleasurable as any I had ever known. But like before, it was not to be forever.

The strange new structures crept closer. Where once there had been brick and stone, bigger and stranger creatures existed, clad in glass, plastic and metal. Out in the bay, stone arms began extending outwards from the shore, carrying men and trucks. Past the end of the Esplanade, over the plain to the mouth of the Taff; a snaking strip of concrete began extending over the cratered mud below. It felt as though I was becoming hemmed in, as though they were walling me into my hunting ground, to make me the exhibit in some larger than life zoo. The cycle continued inexorably. The tide crept in and out, serpentine mud banks emerged from the sea, far out into the bay and disappeared again. The sun lit up the silver grey mud for its few dry hours, the grass swayed, the sun arced across the sky, and the walls around it all crept upwards.

In all this growing turbulence they came for me again. This time it was silent, the street would remain, refurbished for the influx of new and richer folk than I. A tidy man in an expensive suit told me that my eight years of tenancy were up. He kindly showed me the official looking slip on his clip board, and ushered me out. A lick of paint, a bit of work here and there and the Esplanade was returned to its former ravishing glory. As for me, I was once again destitute. I couldn't leave my hunting ground, I had no where to go. I moved around the bay to build myself a hut under the newly built flyover, at the mouth of the Taff. The concrete underbelly flew above me, rumbling with the many cars that passed above my head. I made a sturdy shelter between two grooved pillars, and that is where I am lying now as I tell you this.

Things were fine for a short while, my food was still abundant, and my shelter suited me. The views were still pleasant, although I no longer saw the children play in that dark place. I could see them on the opposite bank of the Taff, playing in the rotting ruin of the old hospital ship's hull. They were too far off though, separated by the deep grey mud banks and brown streak of tidal river. I could occasionally hear their shouts of glee when the din of traffic above my head subsided.
Yes, I was fine here for a time. Then those bastards finished that monstrous wall, far in the distance across the bay. I was finished the moment they completed that barrage. That last piece of concrete that built it should have carried my epitaph. Once it was finished, the tide never moved again. The water level moved up, covering my grass hunting ground, and taking all my food and future belongings with it. It left me stranded here on this concrete island beneath the flyover, and here I have been trapped since the day it was finished, slowly watching my weight disappear and the water rise. If only I'd learnt to swim as a child.

I had to laugh though, all that time, money, and work. What are you left with? A giant lake topped with all the debris and junk that was mine before you messed with my world. And you bastards will never get rid of those floating reminders of what you did to me. Ha, ha, that's my testimonial to you, spread out as a message in a million floating bottles, or, oil drums, gas cylinders, old sofas, dead birds, shit, used condoms, tampons, bin liners, you name it. I leave it as my final gift to you all, along with one last piece of rubbish that will shortly be floating your way when the rising water carries my dead body off this concrete bier. Fuck you all very much.